Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

The priest's inquisitorial instincts suffered but little from the
want of classical apparatus of the Inquisition At no time of the
world's history have men been at a loss how to inflict mental and
bodily anguish upon their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to
them in the growing complexity of their passions and the early
refinement of their ingenuity. But it may safely be said that
primeval man did not go to the trouble of inventing tortures. He
was indolent and pure of heart. He brained his neighbour
ferociously with a stone axe from necessity and without malice.
The stupidest mind may invent a rankling phrase or brand the
innocent with a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod;
a few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope; or even
a simple mallet of heavy, hard wood applied with a swing to human
fingers or to the joints of a human body is enough for the
infliction of the most exquisite torture. The doctor had been a
very stubborn prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of that
"bad disposition" (so Father Beron called it), his subjugation
had been very crushing and very complete. That is why the limp in
his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his cheeks
were so pronounced. His confessions, when they came at last, were
very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the
floor, he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and rage, at
the fertility of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of
pain which makes truth, honour, selfrespect, and life itself
matters of little moment.

And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous phrase,
"Will you confess now?" reaching him in an awful iteration and
lucidity of meaning through the delirious incoherence of
unbearable pain. He could not forget. But that was not the worst.
Had he met Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr.
Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him. This
contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead; but
the sickening certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking
anybody in the face.

Dr. Monygham. had become, in a manner, the slave of a ghost. It
was obviously impossible to take his knowledge of Father Beron
home to Europe. When making his extorted confessions to the
Military Board, Dr. Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. He
longed for it. Sitting half-naked for hours on the wet earth of
his prison, and so motionless that the spiders, his companions,
attached their webs to his matted hair, he consoled the misery of
his soul with acute reasonings that he had confessed to crimes
enough for a sentence of death--that they had gone too far with
him to let him live to tell the tale.